As a beekeeper, I’m supposed to really dislike this wasp. It’s one of several predators that can give colonies a hard time. But I can’t help but admit the beauty of this creature. This time-lapse pays homage to this deadly but lovely wasp as it is modeled, textured, rigged and rendered in Blender 2.66 and Cycles.

Here’s another fantastic time-lapse, the creation of a lantern in Blender 3D. When modeling 3D in real time it’s easy to lose the rhythm of creativity as you focus on verts and faces. But seeing the creative process sped up is really neat. And seeing the work of others sped up very educational. I see things I would do, and I see things I may do differently but I often see things that are done in a way I wouldn’t have thought of myself. Kudos to those who take the time to create these time-lapses. The artist, who drew inspiration from Andrew Price’s Cycles Materials tutorial, has kindly made the resulting model available here too: http://www.blendswap.com/blends/textures/lantern-2/

Time-lapse videos of artists creating 3D scenes and models are wonderful tools of expressing methods of modeling quickly. They’re not heavily commented usually but if done well are often easy to follow if one has the basic understanding of the tool in question. You’ll see things you recognize, and learn new techniques too. While longer tutorials are great for in-depth instruction, sometimes it’s nice to just go through a quick time-lapse of the methods themselves.

In this case, an actual digitized skull is being used to create a likeness of a person using Blender 3D. This used to be done with clay layered over actual skulls but this skull was digitally scanned in and the process is done in the computer instead.